03/03/2026
We interviewed Bess Murphy — Curator of Art and Social Practice — and Jason Garcia, Co-Curator and Santa Clara Pueblo artist at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum about the woman whose name has long been wrapped in myth and intrigue in New Mexico and around the world: Georgia O’Keeffe.
If O’Keeffe hadn’t existed, America might have invented her — the solitary woman artist claiming her “private mountain,” transforming stark landscapes into icons of identity. But this new lens asks harder questions: Who did the land belong to? How was her image constructed? And what happens when we separate the mythology from the complicated woman who lived in Abiquiú?
The exhibition Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country centers around Indigenous perspectives and the deep Tewa relationship to the tablelands O’Keeffe painted. It also opens conversation about privilege, marketing, community, and the so-called “Georgia Effect”.
Her lesser-known Abiquiú home (not Ghost Ranch) is undergoing conservation and will open to the public in the near future.
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